


Realizations: Grief & Fortuitous Outcomes

by PennamePersona



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst at the beginning, Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Mentions of Ned's death, Realizing romantic feelings, Watchin' some wheel of fortune, spoilers for the finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 18:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20800952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PennamePersona/pseuds/PennamePersona
Summary: The week after the last battle, there’s a moment that all of it slips his mind entirely.orIntrospection, Sadness, Comfort, & Realizing You Love A Big Beautiful Alien Woman





	Realizations: Grief & Fortuitous Outcomes

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how long it's been since I posted something that was actually just one whole, unbroken scene but y'know what I didn't expect Justin McElroy to fully sell me on Waynerva (Ducknerva?) but here we are

The week after the last battle, there’s a moment that all of it slips his mind entirely.

It’s evening, and Duck’s in his apartment, alone. He’s about halfway done with a model ship, a real complicated piece, and he’s feeling good about it. His supplies are a bit scattered on the kitchen table, but he knows where everything is. He’s gotten good at keeping it all contained closer to the center, so his cat can’t try and snag anything. He thinks of her reaching up with her paw so carefully and tragically obvious, thinking she’s sneaky. He huffs a laugh, the mental image so like Ned. He should mention that, next time he’s at the Cryptonomica. Ned would love a cat burglar joke -

There haven’t been many times in his life that Duck’s so fully understood what it means to have your blood run cold.

This is one.

It’s awful, really, because it’s not just remembering that Ned’s dead. It’s remembering that Ned’s dead and Aubrey’s in Sylvain, and so’s Vincent and Dani and Thacker and Dr. Harris fuckin’ Bonkers, and he can’t get to any of them, no matter how badly he wants to.

He drops what he was holding and puts his head in his hands. He shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes and tries desperately not to cry. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to prove, much less who he’s trying to prove it to. He’s in pain, he probably should cry, but it just hurts too much - 

“Wayne Newton, I have come to watch your Earth Wheel of Fortuitous Outcomes!” 

Minerva’s voice echoes against the walls of his apartment, and probably outside of it, too. She’s standing in the doorway, the sun casting its lowering rays on her through his kitchen window. 

She’s smiling, like she so often is. He’d forgotten she was coming over, honestly. He’s been doing a lot of forgetting, lately, maybe too much, maybe like repressing, and Beacon’s gonna have something to say about that -

That’s the point he does start crying.

_ Stupid fuckin’ sword _ . Duck thinks, both too aware and too separated from the shaking of his shoulders as he chokes out a sob.  _ Bet he’d get a kick out of being the thing to break the dam. _

“Duck Newton?” Minerva asks, voice drowned in concern. He hears the door shut and her heavy footsteps, and then she’s kneeling in front of him, holding his forearms just a bit too tight, and he’s still got the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes, but they’re getting wet now.

“Duck - er, Wayne Newton, what has happened?” She sounds so thoroughly bewildered that it almost makes Duck want to laugh. Not a real laugh, but a bitter, cynical laugh, the kind that he’s never liked all that much, honestly, and the kind he can’t do right now because everyone’s  _ gone _ and it  _ hurts _ .

“I am not gone,” Minerva says. It’s after he hears her that he remembers the sound of his own broken voice sobbing his thoughts out, the wet “Everyone’s  _ gone _ ” and normally he thinks he’d be embarrassed by that.

“I am not gone, Wayne Newton.” Minerva says, gentle like she rarely sounds. “Neither is Leo, or Dr. Sarah Drake, or Ranger Juno Devine, or your very soft cat -”

He does actually laugh, then. Minerva stops as soon as he does, and it feels so odd to be honestly laughing when he feels so pained, but god does he love how she is.

“She is pretty soft, huh?” Duck says quietly. Minerva doesn’t reply beyond a quiet hum, and Duck knows he won’t be getting out of this quite that easily.

“What is it, Duck Newton?” She asks. 

Duck sighs and pulls his hands away from his face. Minerva lets go of his arms as soon as he does, and he takes that moment to just look at her hands. They’re so big, bigger than his, large and powerful and beautiful, their dark brown lighter in some areas with scars.

They’re as sturdy as the rest of her, so real and not as larger than life as she’s sometimes felt to him, before going through all that hell together.

“I miss them, Minerva.” He says. His voice sounds a bit hollow, and he slumps forward a little, then turns his head up to look at her. “Aubrey and Vincent and Thacker and fuck, Minnie, I miss Ned.”

Minerva hums again, her brows drawing together a bit. She looks sad, but not pitying. 

She looks beautiful.

At that thought, Duck makes a strangled noise in his throat and jerks upright in his chair. He can feel his face getting red and is hit for the thousandth time with the desperate desire to be able to be subtle and not show his emotions so fully on his sleeve.

“What has happened?” Minerva asks, sounding a bit panicked. God, she’s so worried, and he’s not gonna be able to lie to her, but this does not feel like the time to confess his - what, his love? Attraction? Jesus, he doesn’t even know, and that’s helping even  _ less _ .

“Uh,” Duck says, not feeling good at all about how shaky his voice is. “N-nothing. Nothing at all. Everything’s fine, I’ve had a great evening, just been, uh, watchin’ some Wheel. Wait, fuck, you came over to do that, you know it wasn’t on, shit. Fuck.”

“Wayne,” Minerva stops him, puts a hand on each of his shoulders, and holds him steady. She does that a lot, he thinks. She holds him so steady, sees things in him he never would’ve thought of on his own, and definitely wouldn’t have believed if it weren’t for the sheer force of her confidence.

She’s amazing, and he can’t leave her.

They’ve talked about going their separate ways, talked about it just a few days ago, and instead she’s here tonight to watch Wheel with him, and he’s in love with her.

“Fuck,” He says again.

“Wayne Newton, please tell me what is going on in that head of yours.” Minerva says with an exasperated laugh. “I do not understand anything that is happening, but I would like to help.”

“So,” Duck says, his voice still a bit strangled, but less so now that he’s not trying to lie. “I kinda forgot about everything that happened, like, just for a minute? I wasn’t thinkin’ about it, and then I thought about telling Ned some stupid joke, and remembering he’s dead kinda sucked ass, honestly. And then I got hit all over again with everyone else being gone, and fuck, that still hurts, ‘Nerva.”

Minerva nods, her expression so very serious, like everything he’s saying is the most important thing she’s heard all day. 

“And what about the jumping?” She asks.

It’s a reasonable question. He’d ask it, if he were in her shoes. And Minerva’s too clever for him to have even the vaguest chance of slipping by without answering her.

“That was unrelated.” Duck says, trying anyway.

“I do not believe you, Wayne Newton.” Minerva says. She doesn’t have any judgement in her tone, more a soft coaxing, like she knows this is hard. Which she does, Duck supposes.

“That’s fair.” Duck admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “It wasn’t about missing everyone, so that part’s not a lie, and I want that on the record.”

“Which record would that be?” Minerva asks.

Duck wants to kiss her.

This feels ridiculous. He was sobbing not ten minutes ago about lost friends, and that  _ does _ still hurt, it really does, but it was the shock that got him. And there’s nothing like a second, less expected shock to make grief feel a bit more manageable.

Like wanting to kiss his former mentor, who made his life so much more complicated just by existing near it. Like realizing slowly, so slowly he didn’t even know he was realizing it, that he loves her.

A lot, maybe. Enough to ask her to stay, Duck thinks.

  
  


“It’s just a saying, Min.” Duck says, gently. Too gently. Minerva’s stunningly good at reading him, and now that he knows about this feeling in himself, he’s not gonna have a chance in hell of hiding it from her.

But Duck never liked hiding, not really.

“What is it that’s troubling you, aside from your lost companions?” Minerva asks. She’s looking at him so seriously. He loves how seriously she takes everything, loves her passion, loves her dawning compassion, loves watching her live because she does it with all of herself, always.

“I wanna date you,” Duck says. “Do you know what dating is? Is that a thing y’all did on your planet?”

“Are you referring to courtship?” Minerva asks, her brow and voice both raising higher than Duck has ever seen.

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” Duck says, smoothly, like a confident person who understands his emotions.

Minerva just blinks for a moment.

“I…” She starts, then closes her mouth again. She sits down heavily on the floor and turns her whole body towards him. 

“I’ve never seen you properly speechless before.” Duck says, a small smile quirking at the corner of his mouth.

“I was not expecting this, Duck - er, Wayne Newton.” Minerva does sound surprised, but Duck’s anxiety falls away when he sees a grin starting to break across her face.

“You can still call me Duck, honey.” He says with a small chuckle, followed by a small, strangled sound. “Uh, wait, I didn’t mean to just start off with the pet names, I don’t know how you feel about that kinda thing, fuck - ”

“Duck Newton, I would be glad to engage in courtship with you.” Minerva beams at him, and Duck shuts up.

He shuts up for a lot of the rest of the night. He throws commentary at Wheel a bit, though less than Minerva. He’s happy just to watch her watch it, to enjoy the force with which she drinks in Earth’s culture (even the cheap stuff). 

He also kisses her big, beautiful alien face, and his mouth feels cleverer than it has in years.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos are cool comments are great, hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> I take writing requests! Information at: [provisionalpenname on tumblr](https://provisionalpenname.tumblr.com)


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